Coulter: There Should be More Jailed Journalists

Ann Coulter needs no introduction and despite having a terribly hoarse voice — due to whichever bar she went to last night — Coulter made sure to march on through her speech. Her address gave the usual red meat for the college crowd, but also gave some back handed support to, of all people, Mubarak.

Coulter announced that she was happy and surprised to see liberals had “suddenly” discovered their love for freedom in Egypt. She noted that they didn’t seem as eager to bring democracy to Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein would eventually be deposed and would emerge from his spider-hole looking “like Charlie Sheen after a weekend.”

But now liberals are “shocked and appalled” to find a dictator in the Middle East.

She provided a defense of Mubarak as a pro-Israel ally of America. She suggested some other reasons why liberals oppose him: “he shut down Google; do not get between a liberal and his internet porn”

She also referenced similar critiques about how the Democrats responded to Iran’s revolution: “The voting [in Iran] was over 100%, oh sorry I was thinking about Al Franken’s election in Minnesota”

Her summation on why there is support for Egypt’s revolution? “Now a loyal American ally comes under attack, and they are burning for democracy.”

But it wasn’t all foreign policy. On the bi-partisan seating arrangement for the State of the Union:

“It explains why they were sold out of t-shirts saying ‘I’m with stupid’”

But the best of Coulter’s routine has always been the Q&A session, where overeager college students get to ask questions of their idol. Some paraphrased and selected highlights:

Q: Where do you get your energy?

A: Reading the New York Times gins you up, keeps you going.

Q: Why does the GOP think that free and fair elections can exist in Iraq, not Egypt?

A: Perhaps it will, it’s not as clear as in Iraq. And we had American servicemen to make sure. When Iraqis were waving their purple fingers after having voted you couldn’t find more long faces on the Democrats, including John Kerry.

Q. What is more important to American values? Being friends with Israel or knowing that there are jailed journalists [in Egypt]?

A. I think there should be more jailed journalists. [Huge applause from audience.]

The last question was about GOProud’s participation in CPAC. On this point, Coulter actually wanted to give a longer and less off-the-cuff answer, giving an answer that was surprisingly forthright about why she supported their inclusion.

Coulter first took pride in having spoken to GOProud at their convention and took credit getting GOProud to drop their gay marriage platform.

She then argued that the goal should be to not let liberals “co-opt” gays, or as she put it: “They want to use gays as a cat’s paw to attack the family.”

And why do liberals want to use gays to break up families by promoting gay marriage? “They want religion destroyed. They want family destroyed so you have loyalty directly to the state!” (This got a huge applause from the audience)

Coulter made sure to shore up her credentials on this point: “I am as born again evangelical Christian as they come, AND I am friend of the gays!”

For Coulter, she felt that the most important thing was not letting gays becoming “identified” as gay:

“You have all of culture telling gays you should be liberal, just like you had all of culture telling women they had to be liberal.”

She also has a suggestion for the GOProud motto: “Gays without the sodomy.”

“I’m not without sin, none of us are” Coulter added near the end of her remarks.

Elvis: Totally agree. There’s not a adult in the room anymore in the GOP. The lunatics are running the asylum.

I would think Frum would be embarrassed just putting her photo out there, after all the despicable insults she has thrown on people. And for all her ‘Christian’ values, she is the antithesis of them, a very un-Christian like, unlady-like, trashy looking, trash-talking former lawyer who has no other redeeming values except these moronic stand-up comic shows.

That’s not a speech. It’s a stand up act for right-wing nutjobs. She has nothing to say. She does know how to get a rise out of her audience but it’s vapid and pointless. She’s no longer offensive at least because it’s impossible to take her seriously.

A Coulter said;
“A. I think there should be more jailed journalists. [Huge applause from audience.]”

I think there should be more jailed conservative columnist. Just kidding, just the stupid ones.

So, whatever happened to the “conservative value” of supporting the Constitution and the 1st Amendment?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Andrew Sullivan gives out awards every year for various things, including ones for what he calls the most “intemperate” quote of the year — one on the right, one on the left. Coulter is ineligible for the right-wing award to, in his words, “give others a chance”.

She is quite literally not worth listening to. In addition to doing nothing but bash and insult, it’s been years since she said anything she hasn’t said before.

“Even secular pollsters show that conservatism is far more popular than liberalism.”

That’s because fear sells and that’s all conservatives have been selling for the last two decades. Love or hate Reagan, you can’t deny that he traded on optimism and generally played to peoples’ better angels. But his inheritors within the conservative movement have been peddling fear, anger, resentment and an orgiastic celebration of stupidity. Coulter’s vile rantings are the perfect reflection of this new conservatism. And as Elvis pointed out, that’s a sure route to the trash heap of history.

She is a both a hypocrite and very un-funny, if that is what she is trying to do. Her book sales are now falling flat. She has nothing more to say, except more silly and sophomoric barbs against ‘liberals’ and ‘Democrats.’

As someone else said here, big, fat ‘yawn.’ What a face for what passes off as conservatism these days. They’re in the tank. She proves it.

First, you ever notice how Coulter never rationally answers a question, but just kind of makes a joke about it. Like the jailed journalist answer. I wrote about her answer to a question regarding Muslims. Again, she always has a joke.

Second, did not Coulter support Romney in 2008? Is she saying that Romney is now like McCain? What has Romney done in the past two years that has made her change her mind? Of course, we know that Romney is being hit by his health care policies and that is probably why Coulter has grown cold toward him. But still, it just shows that Coulter floats with the conservative tide.

I would also like to hear her argue the differences between Christie and Romney. They are much the same ideologically.

Far more numerous are born black babies and children subject to cyclical poverty.
How many of them are conservatives saving? Underlying this issue, what are conservatives doing to effect a decrease in the incidence of unintended pregnancy in the first place?

ktward: You said a mouthful! The same questions I would like to ask ‘real conservatives.’

I have yet to hear any conservative these days worry half as much for the poor babies and children that are born everyday in this country. Nor do I hear any useful suggestions for birth control, which of course would lower the pregnancy rate and abortion rates.

They have no suggestions other than: 1) don’t have sex till you marry, and 2) never mention birth control and 3) I don’t want my taxes going for all these ‘socialist’ programs for the poor.

“I am as born again evangelical Christian as they come, AND I am friend of the gays!”

Coulter is a Christian?? Goodness, the threshold for being a Christian these days is so low. You’d think that you’d at least have to, say, follow the teachings of Jesus. Ya know: turn the other cheek, don’t bear false witness, ….

TJ: A true Christian is one that would never bear false witness. Which she does every time she opens her ugly mouth . A true Christian would never insult or trash others; it’s her style . A true Christian fosters peace, love, forgiveness. She fosters hate and fear under a guise of ‘political comedy.’

There is something really radically wrong, deeply wrong, inside this woman. Something very wounded within her. She enjoys her insults and the more enraged people become, the more she does it, and the more she enjoys it.

She is the antithesis of anything Jesus Christ taught to his followers. She ought to be ashamed of herself, but I guess she loves money too much.

ktward
Ben-Peter: [C]onservatives are saving unborn black babies.
“I don’t agree with this statement on several levels, but okay.”

Actually, not okay (though I agree with your not agreeing with the statement because it is bs)
I am pro-life, pro-life doesn’t mean running around carrying signs against abortion, pro-life is funding pre-natal health care (Republicans want to get rid of health care for the poor uninsured, this is a fact) being pro-life means responsible sex education so that young people do not pull a Bristol (even with her family support her son lives apart from his father, and I would not want to date a woman who has another guys kid), being pro life means (as you wrote) that the children are born in an environment where they can reach their potential.

I promise you these pro lifers do not have any real desire to save these black children, if they did they would work on saving the black children who become pregnant.

Coulter, Beck, etc… they all have their shtick and get paid lots of money for their rhetoric – how much of what they say to they personally believe? Not all of it for sure – probably not even half – but they are the type of sad people who will literally sell their soul for the almighty dollar…

Coulter is just an extreme example of the redefinition of Christianity by the social conservatives. These “Christians” have never read the Sermon on the Mount, or “give your wealth away” or feed the poor or “it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven”.

You’d think a Christian would be more concerned by the redefinition of “Christianity” than the redefinition of marriage.

Her hypocritical support of gays is like some old Southerner who supports “colored” folks as long as they behave themselves, sit in the back of the bus and stay away from those Jews and liberal types from the North.

She is impregnable. Her mere existence exonerates abortion or birth control. She is what my Daddy warned me of when he told me to be careful what I took home at night if I didn’t think I would like eating breakfest across the table with her.

“I think there should be more jailed journalists”: I’ll take that as an unwitting admission that she really isn’t a journalist after all. Not that I– or anyone else above the Family Research Council/Left Behind level of culture– considered her as one in the first place.

Let me confess that I usually find Coulter funny–sometimes even hilarious– but have never taken her seriously as a commentator or thinker. (Anyone who considers her a serious thinker is deluded.) But I didn’t fully appreciate her for the cringe-makingly embarrasing sophomore she is until one afternoon, years ago, when I caught part of a C-SPAN debate between her and Peter Beinart. Beinart was grilling her on the lunacy of pre-emptive war, and challenged her to cite one major war in modern memory that the United States entered (1) without provocation and (2) in order to avert imminent disaster, such as a slaughter of civilians, etc. Coulter unhesitatingly responded “WWII” in the sort of ‘Duh, Dumbass’ snarky tone with which she responds to nearly all questions– and a plainly dumbfounded Beinart had to point out to her that Adolf Hilter declared war on the United States. I instantly wrote her off and have never regretted it.

As well as WW ll was going for 2.2 years in Europe and Africa before we entered the war, something any Englishman would love to remind a semi literate nag like her of. The right loves to pretend they have a great grasp of history but it is more like some WW ll Hollywood film version of history than anything sober & serious

It is observed that the American Left, while calling itself open-minded and tolerant, is really just narrow minded and intolerant. Many of the posts by flaming lefties on this forum prove my point. They cannot argue against Ann Coulter, so they attack her personally. It points to the fact that the American Left is by and large, intellectually dishonest and frightfully wedded to old, stale, failed ideas such as “social justice” whatever the hell that means at any particular time – because of course it really doesn’t mean anything.

The American Left feels like its been kicked in the teeth by Ann Coulter. I appreciate that very much.

How do you answer someone who accuses the left of going to the internet for porn, when the mental midgets she panders to view more porn than the her all encompassing boogey man left? Or how do you answer someone who claims to support freedom then says more journalists should be jailed? Or how does one respond to someone who claims to be a Christian who bashes non Christians and then extols brutal selfish behavior? She is nothing but the most petty and shallow dispensers of generic liberal bashing designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of low brow, kneejerk, barely literate jerks. Her fans and she, like most shallow bullies, are great at throwing stones but cry the loudest when they are tossed back.

Don’t get me wrong, we love having you here. You knee-jerk, moral and intellect free comments make us all feel grateful that the rest of us evolved far beyond you and your kin.

@TJParker Should I assume you’re joking? Coulter is no more a virgin than Madonna is.

As for attacking her on substance…she has none.

and btw, I never hear the word “tolerant” from anyone but conservatives making a straw-man argument. I could give a crap about anyone’s tolerance. Ann has the right to say whatever she wants and I have just as much right to criticize her for what she says. I have yet to hear anyone say anything about her nastier than the things she says about others. So drop the victim act.

Of course we can and do. Let’s take the statement that we want to use gays to attack the family and religion making us all individuals who see only the state as our family.

Except that intact Ozzie and Harriet families are more common in blue states.Except that there are many people whose liberalism stems from their religion. (In my college, one Michelle Malkin calls radical, the only time I had a roommate or housemate who didn’t go to church was when I lived alone.) Except that same-sex marriage is an attempt to create family. Except that if anyone is launching an assault on the family for a “Brave New World” dystopia. it is the corporate world which keeps parents at long hours away from the family and then targets and manipulates children shamelessly.

Except that in all the divorce scenario’s I create at 3 in the morning when my husband is on a business trip, “the gays” don’t figure in any of them, whereas hetrosexual, cosmo-reading types like Coulter do worry me. I am not unique in this. Very few wives worry about the homosexuality ruining their family.

And except that Coulter’s claim that she is a christian is either a lie or shames her sect of christianity. Jesus Christ would not have permitted her either to judge her neighbors or to scorn the least among us the way she does.

Can I criticize her for her idea? Yes. Easily. Do I also call her out on other behavior? Yes. She makes a living being a horrible person. I’m sorry but that should be held to account as well. The fact that you indulge in this kind of entertainment calls into question your intellectual and moral discipline, Kurlis.

She’s really a very disturbed person, imho. Why would someone use below the belt insults for fame and fortune? Because it’s ‘fun?’ One has wonder what kind of a woman would stoop to those levels.

But she does. She’s a clown with a potty mouth, and some deep neurotic need to put others down. Some people just like anybody who trashes the other side politically, even if it borders on indecent or vulgarity or classlessness. But she gets off on that. Now that’s one real weird person.

And of course, some people will become bottom-feeders for money.

As for her claiming to being a Christian, one has to laugh aloud. She is not a Christian. I spent my entire life in Christianity and I tell you no one who understands or respects the message and the teachings of Christ would ever portray themselves as Coulter does while claiming to be a Christian.

Coulter, in fact, USES Christianity for her own nefarious purposes. She pretends she is on some higher moral ground because she claims she is a ‘christian’ (small ‘c’ for her), and then turns around and projects every conceivable anti-christian rhetoric. You could not do that and be credible at the same time.

That people applaud this charade is just another example of the transparency of political fanatics who are so ‘into’ trashing their opponents beliefs, enjoy going with the bottom feeders like Coulter – proving to the whole world that they are very similar to the Pharisees whom Christ spoke against for their preening righteousness and religiosity.

Coulter needs to go back to Christianity 101 – and learn the Beatitudes as spoken by Christ. Instead she mocks Christ, everyone can see that but the idiots that think she is ‘awesome.’

She is a foul person, a charlatan, a mean-spirited clown who makes money off insulting and putting down others. Nothing to admire there for sure.

Since she is always making personal attacks on people, to complain about people attacking Coulter on personal issues is a tad hypocritical to say the least. But bullies always burn with their self righteous victim hood when they get a dose of their own medicine.

Then I’m confused. She’s a self-confessed evangelical Christian, chronically unmarried and protector of traditional marriage against the gay blight. Surely this requires a pudendum virginalis. Well that or she’s a liar.

Oh, please. Ann would implode if you just asked her a few basic questions, all of them questions she would not hesitate to ask someone else or topics she would not shy away from using to attack someone else.

1. Have you ever had sexual relations with a married man?

2. Have you ever used illegal drugs? Which ones? How often?

3. Why did you try to vote illegally in Connecticut in 2002 and 2004?

I’m sure others could come up with more questions. She would have a major meltdown if these things were even asked. And really, anyone who has her on as a guest who doesn’t is being a wimp.

your comments above are about the lowest i ever care to see on this site. they add nothing to anything. i sympathize with having a bile over-run when thinking of coulter, but in this case i believe you have placed yourself firmly at her level, or even perhaps below it.

Re: “low” comments, have you checked out this red-menace dude? There’s low for you.
Pnumi2, otoh, has clocked in a lot of smart, insightful content here at FF. He’s entitled to rip off a few one-liners now and again. I’m pretty sure we’re all adults here and can handle a bit of “racy” humor.

yes, thanks for making that clear; i am a crankypants, and proud of it.

i have seen the postings of red menace, and i expect nothing from him or her. i have come to expect something from pnumi2, and from you as well. which is why i was shocked to see the conversation devolve the way it did. it is not racy humor to insinuate that someone has engaged in bestiality. it is just an ad hominem attack. and it is low, lower than i have ever heard coulter stoop to (but i suspect that is true only because i have mostly tuned her out/she just hasn’t thought of it yet).

your defense of pnumi2 in this instance is hard for me to differentiate from the cop who feels he has earned a free pass on beating an innocent kid because he has done so much for the community otherwise. the irony here is that ann coulter cannot possibly be compared to an innocent kid *until* someone accuses her of bestiality. it’s pretty much the one thing you can say she is innocent of. get it? to argue that we are all grownups who can tolerate a little racy humor, yes, i agree. this is just not funny. or racy. it was nasty in every sense of the word. it undermines not only the credibility of the speaker, but it also undermines the very legitimate criticisms of coulter in prior entries on this article, many of them from pnumi2.

and pnumi2- your quote from goldwater, having been misunderstood (see this for a short and far better discussion of the quote than i could have put together: http://aphilosopher.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/extremism-in-defense-of-liberty/ ), has been used as cover for more hateful behavior than i care to think of (for that would really ruin my valentine’s day). you’d do well to keep in mind that it is about the value of moderation, not about the value of indecency. your comment was not extreme, it was just indecent.

“Senator Goldwater reminds us that there is nothing too extreme we can say about crass, commercial false patriots like Ann Coulter.”

and nothing too extreme i could say about you, then david frum could say about me…remind me again what the value of what you said was? because i am just not seeing it.

If pnumi typically relied upon scandalous ad hom to make his points, I might agree with you. But since he doesn’t, I don’t. Do you honestly believe he was seriously opining that Coulter engages in bestiality? It was nothing more than an off-hand (if perhaps off-color) quip.

Nevertheless, I myself am finding it difficult to forgive him for the scary imagery. In fact, I’m overdue for my next brain wash.

I wonder how you condemned Ann Coulter’s remarks about the Left’s opposition to the war in Iraq as treasonous? And all the left being Traitors? Poetic license? Have you read her book? Can you point out how she has qualified or apologised for them? Certainly if she has recanted them, I owe her an apology

The charge of beastiality doesn’t even begin to compare to the charge of treason. Wouldn’t you agree with that?

I would like to hear what you have to say about her charges against the Left, before I consider whether I care about anything extreme you might think about me. I freely confess to the inappropriate, intemperate and indecent remarks I made about her. Remarks I would make
about anyone holds the disgusting opinions she does. Show me where she has retracted what she said and I will retract what I said about her.

“you don’t fight fire with fire. you fight it with water.”

Sometimes you do and sometime you don’t. You don’t fight electrical fires with water and some chemical fires.

And look at poor Obama: water never put out the fires of ‘Birtherism’ and “Muslimism” and all the other filth the Right Wing has thrown at him for the last two years.

This indecency of mine should be a wake up call to the Right what to expect if you continue to blame ‘Hussein’ Obama for everything wrong in the world today, including the money that has to be borrowed and printed to get the economy out of the quicksand that the Republicans drove it into from 1/01 to 1/09

The thing I truly enjoy about AC is that she’s very clever; unlike Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, she actually takes a nugget of truth and then stretches it almost to the breaking point. Of course, her spiels are no more valuable from a “political truth” (an oxymoron) standpoint, but she’s much more entertaining that the others – and that’s what she is, at the end of the day, like Jon Steward.

For example:

“We have this problem in our democracy that we keep voting people in who give grants… unless you vote for people who will cut spending, spending will not get cut.” True, but begs the corruption of those in power and the influence of Lobbyists over them.

I chuckled– it’s common to see his first name misspelled as John, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen his last name misspelled. (In case it wasn’t just an understandable typo, it’s Stewart. (Although originally Stuart.) But no biggee.)

Thing is, once you strip away the funny factor (inarguably subjective), it’s easy to see that Coulter and Stewart are completely different strains of entertainment commentary.

Coulter’s a clever wordsmith, no question, but her humor carries zero nuance.
Her supercilious sarcasm is a blunt instrument intended for no deeper purpose than to demean. She is a self-described polemicist, not a satirist. Equally as important to this exercise in contrast: she doesn’t have a self-deprecating bone in her body.

Stewart, otoh, is a satirist in keeping with the centuries-long tradition.
His sarcasm is indeed both nuanced and a scalpel, as he deftly peels back the layers of hypocrisy and hyperbole of pols/pundits/media/pop culture. He’s every bit as hard on libs/Dems as he is on cons/GOP– it’s just that, well, the GOP & Fox are an exponentially more target-rich environment. There’s also this: Stewart’s a professional comedian with a team of smart writers, so it stands to reason that he’s generally considered way more funny that Coulter, if funny’s what you’re after.

One thing that Coulter and Stewart do have in common: they know their audience.
Where Stewart’s appreciates his self-deprecation, Coulter’s appreciates her self-righteousness.

Coulter is nothing but a trash-talking money-making machine . I thought her very vulgar, very despicable word ‘broads’ describing widows of some who died on 9/11 was about as ugly as it gets .

Frankly, I can’t hear enough legitimate insults hurled against this woman that would satisfy me. She is beneath contempt. That she wears a cross around her neck while doing it is a sin, and she knows it. So she is both a contemptible liar and sacrilegious. She obviously needs some mothering badly, or else her parents did a poor job teaching her class and character. It’s either one or the other.

And I can’t wait till she finally gets that pie smack in her ugly potty mouth where it deserves to be.